Only one minority needs representation in Iraq's
new government: The individual

By Robert W. Tracinskiweb posted April 28, 2003

Having been forced to recognize that our soldiers won a brilliant military
victory in Iraq, media commentators are trying to minimize that achievement
by loudly proclaiming how much more difficult it will be to "win the
peace" by establishing a stable and benevolent new government in Iraq.

But the greatest threat to this goal is not the existing divisions and hatreds
among different Iraqi factions. The problem is the advice these very same
commentators are giving about how to deal with those divisions: that the
key to the political reconstruction of Iraq is to ensure the right political
balance of different ethnic and religious groups. The proper ratio of political
jobs and positions of authority, we are told, must be handed out to Shiites,
Christians, "Marsh Arabs," Kurds, and every other minority faction
in the country. This is supposed to be the only way to keep Iraq from collapsing
into chaos and falling under the sway of a new strong-arm leader.

But merely "balancing" tribal and religious pressure groups will
not solve the problem. Indeed, an approach that focuses primarily on representation
quotas for Iraq's minorities will merely encourage endless power struggles
as each pressure group schemes for a bigger share of political patronage.

What Iraq needs is a much more radical reform: not the sharing of political
power but the limiting of political power--a focus, not on the prerogatives
of ethnic groups, but on the rights of the individual.

The greatest threat to good government in Iraq is precisely that each tribal
and religious faction will demand special favors, that the Shiites in the
south will want a Khomeini-style theocracy, or that the Kurds will make a
grab for control of the northern oil fields. This kind of political gang
warfare between opposing factions is inevitable--so long as the government
has the power to dispense such privileges.

That is why it is crucial, for example, that the new Iraqi government enforce,
not a balance of power between Sunnis and Shiites, but a separation of church
and state. Religion must be made into a private matter, with Shiites, Sunnis,
Christians, and secular Iraqis left free to follow their own individual judgment
in spiritual matters. In the Middle East, where religious fanaticism is far
more prevalent than in the West--and in Iraq, which has a history of conflict
between Sunnis and Shiites--anything less than a complete separation of church
and state is an invitation to civil war.

Just as Iraq must separate church and state, so it must also separate the
state from economics. The most important step is to privatize Iraq's oil
industry.

The Bush administration has stated repeatedly that Iraq's oil "belongs
to the Iraqi people." Yet state ownership of oil reserves has had a
profoundly evil effect on every country in the Middle East.

In a free society, wealth is generated by the productive activities of millions
of private individuals running private businesses. In such a system, most
individuals support themselves through their own endeavors--which makes them
independent of the state and gives them less incentive to resort to pressure-group
tactics to grab a share of government largesse. Yet when the state takes
control of vast oil reserves, the structure of a society is turned upside-down.
When the government controls the nation's largest source of wealth, individuals
conclude that the road to prosperity is not through independent, private
endeavor. Instead, they decide that the way to get ahead is to join together
into political gangs to get their cut of the government's loot.

Privatizing Iraq's oil resources and production facilities would take that
wealth out of the reach of a political spoils system and put it into the
hands of individuals: the nation's most capable businessmen, its most qualified
professionals, and its savviest investors.

Why are our commentators so focused, instead, on a balance of ethnic representation?
The intellectual and political trend of the last century has been to elevate "group
rights" over individual rights. Our intellectuals tell us that we are
only free if our particular race, class, and gender group has clout in the
government. This approach has been pushing America on a slippery slope toward
balkanization. The same advice will push Iraq over a precipice.

Only one oppressed minority desperately needs representation in Iraq's new
government: the individual. In the long run, it is only by protecting the
liberty and independence of the individual--not by keeping Iraqis ganged
together into warring clans--that "Operation Iraqi Freedom" can
succeed.

Robert Tracinski is a senior fellow at the Ayn
Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn
Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Send comments to reaction@aynrand.org.